These mes­sages come to us from a vari­ety of sources such as media, well-mean­ing friends and fam­i­ly and social media posts. They can leave us feel­ing defi­cient because we are sim­ply not doing enough!

OK. Take three deep breaths and imag­ine your shoul­ders relax­ing with each out­ward breath.

Now, just as there are break­fasts to go and take­away meals that are aimed at the busy and time-poor, there are mind­ful­ness prac­tices that we can incor­po­rate into the nor­mal course of our day. In fact, the empha­sis of mind­ful­ness is on being, not doing. The beau­ty of mind­ful­ness to go is that it won’t take up extra time or become some­thing that you must place on your to-do list or become an expert at.

Remem­ber these tips are meant to be eas­i­ly incor­po­rat­ed into your day and they will make a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence to how you feel phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly with the min­i­mum of effort. 

Sound good?

Great! Let’s step through some exam­ples of how sim­ply shift­ing your focus makes your expe­ri­ences rich­er and mean­ing­ful. Our ner­vous sys­tems love this stuff.

As you awak­en and before get­ting out of bed, bring to your mind a cou­ple of things that you are grate­ful for. Savour them and lux­u­ri­ate in the won­der­ful feel­ings they evoke.

While the ket­tle is boil­ing for that impor­tant cup of tea or cof­fee, watch your­self place the tea bag into the cup or the cof­fee into the plunger or machine. Take in the glo­ri­ous smells – stay in that moment for just a few extra sec­onds. Watch your­self pour in the hot water – what can you see/​hear/​smell? Notice if your mind wan­ders off and bring your­self back to the present moment.

Note: Your mind will typ­i­cal­ly want to hijack you at this point! It’s there say­ing ​“great, about time you woke up – now let’s think about every­thing we need to achieve today”. Take no notice of it. We may not be able to switch it off com­plete­ly but what we can do is not buy into the thoughts.

Head­ing out the door for a walk or run? Notice the sky – the colour, the clouds or the ear­ly morn­ing light. If you are lucky enough to be at the beach, notice the sand and how it feels beneath your toes, the tiny pat­terns that have formed overnight and oth­er foot­steps per­haps. Feel the cool­ness or the lack of breeze, feel the qual­i­ty of the air on your skin. Hear the sounds – take a moment to lis­ten for any far­away sounds. Per­haps there is some traf­fic noise or birds off in the dis­tance or the sounds of qui­et rustlings in the under­growth. Look into the water and imag­ine the myr­i­ad of sea life that you can­not see but you know is there. Notice the pat­terns of the waves or the tide gen­tly lap­ping the shore.

Be com­plete­ly in this expe­ri­ence for just a cou­ple of min­utes – enough so that you could lat­er recount the expe­ri­ence to a col­league or friend.

Sim­ply tak­ing your cof­fee into the gar­den or find­ing a sun­ny spot inside is great if you are not able to get out for a walk. Putting your­self in the envi­ron­ment where you can expe­ri­ence some of the ele­ments is like a pow­er boost for your day. If that is in your own back­yard, that is okay.

Maybe you need to get some chil­dren to school. Take the time to be ful­ly present with them, have a lit­tle joke or be sil­ly for a minute – rev­el in that hug or kiss goodbye.

Tak­ing some time to do YOUR life before you go into work is extra ben­e­fi­cial. Our jobs and pro­fes­sions are very impor­tant but we sim­ply can­not do our best work if we do not feel at our best.

See the work­place as anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to prac­tise some ​‘mind­ful­ness to go’ by being ful­ly present when engag­ing in tasks, meet­ings and conversations.

Some of the ways to do this are:

• Avoid mul­ti-task­ing – focus on one thing at a time if possible.
• Prac­tise active lis­ten­ing by pay­ing full atten­tion to your col­league or patient. Real­ly con­nect with them.
• Pay atten­tion to your sur­round­ings and any ten­sion in your body.
• Con­scious­ly choose to take per­spec­tive and look at the big­ger pic­ture rather than sweat the small­er stuff if you find your­self being frustrated.
• Cre­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties to light­en the mood if appropriate.

These sug­ges­tions will have the added ben­e­fit of improv­ing your focus and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty as well as enhanc­ing your well­be­ing and emo­tion­al intelligence.

We can all afford some ​‘mind­ful­ness to go’. It actu­al­ly doesn’t cost us any­thing – just a shift in our focus that fur­ther enhances our every­day experiences.

Yours in the present moment,

Therese Forbes
Bush Sup­port Line